


Six Letters

by Luscinnia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Background - Freeform, F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1474984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luscinnia/pseuds/Luscinnia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade writes letters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Love

Dear Kira,

I have thought for a long time how to start this letter. It is not that I don’t occasionally talk to you – in my mind – but it is a little different. Thirty- six, nearly thirty- seven years is an awful long time, isn’t it?  
I know that you wouldn’t hold it against me that I never visited your grave again after the move to London. You would probably have remarked that it is “just a place” and I would have kissed you, because it would have been just another proof what a wonderful person you had been to me.

I still miss you sometimes.

 

Maybe not as a lover in first place but as my soulmate. Life would have been a lot easier if you had been in it for longer than those few years we had together.

I forgot how your voice sounded or the way you laughed, but I can still remember how you looked like when you were bursting with laughter and I bet you would have the most fantastic laughter lines by now if you would still be here.

Sometimes I wonder if we would have made it to eternity like we used to assure each other of. Seldom by words, but with those small gestures. I loved the way you hooked your pinky finger with mine in this silent promise that never needed to be spoken aloud.

We were good with being quiet and still speaking to each other.  
You opened my eyes for the small things in life that can matter so much and offer so many possibilities. It is your fault that I appreciate the rain so much.

Maybe you wouldn’t remember, but I will never forget it. This one idiotic hot evening. It had been so awfully warm and muggy the entire day that you couldn’t stand it any longer and begged me to seek for a place to cool down and we grabbed our bicycles and nothing else and headed down to the Grand Pier.

It is odd how many details I can recall. I still know that you wore your favourite white skirt and a blue shirt and that I felt silly in my trousers with the holes and the worn down t-shirt with a colour beyond definition. (I think it had been dark green once). But you didn’t care and we had lemon ice cream.

We walked along the Pier and the small beach until the sun finally set and the sand underneath our feet cooled down enough to set our bare feet on it. You told me about the seagulls and that you thought they would sound sad sometimes. I told you about the sea and how I liked the sound of the waves.

Maybe growing up at the sea makes one always loving this sound.

My favourite place in London is the embankment of the Thames and I think you would appreciate it there. If it is not packed with tourists, it is like a piece of home. And Weston – super – Mare will always be home no matter how long I have been away from it.

I miss the seagulls.

We could see the thunderstorm way earlier before it reached us with the smell of electricity and seaweed, but we were too fascinated by this demonstration of power and the spectacle nature provided us with to run away from it. I’ve never been that thoroughly sodden in my entire life and I hardly ever tasted better kisses.

Lemon ice cream, summer sun and salt.

And never heard a sweeter melody than the rain drumming on the wodden planks of the Pier we sought shelter underneath and the rolling growls of the thunder in the distance.  
Thinking back to the day of your accident still hurts. Even after all those years. You had become a part of me and your death tore a wound into my soul that could never fully heal. You were my soulmate.  
I still fail to recall how I felt when I got to know of it. Who told me or how.

Those days between our last kiss, the news and your funeral are blank. It is evident that I must have managed it to live on, but don’t ask me how.  
There wasn’t a Kira, my Kira, to encourage me or comfort me. You were gone from one moment to the other.

I moved on, made mistakes, had success, found wrong friends and lovers and the wrong woman and eventually the right one.  
I became a cop, the one thing we both thought would be rather impossible, but sometimes life goes strange ways. I got divorced, married again and became a father. You would adore Amelia. And I bet she would adore you in return.

Maybe you would say now that it doesn’t do me any good that I never let go of you completely and that there are moments I wish I could share with you. Even today, after nearly thirty- seven years. And I would just shrug my shoulders, like I always did when I didn’t want to agree with you.  
I’m not sad anymore, that you had been made to leave me so early. 

Upon looking back I’m glad for the years we had. They are few in comparison, just the blink of an eye, but we had them, we had those moments of unconditional trust and a love so deep that it hurt. We had the rain and the warm sand under our feets on this evening so many years back.

I said goodbye to you too many times that I will refrain from doing so now.

You will always be in my heart.

Gregory


	2. Father

Dear Dad,

you always assured me that whenever I need someone you will listen to me. No matter what I wanted to talk about.  
I hardly ever made use of this offer although you only have a faint idea how much I always appreciated it. Well, maybe you do. You are my father and know me better than I know myself sometimes.

There are still a few things we never spoke and I’m sure you never had an idea about and right now I don’t know where to start.  
I don’t even know if you will ever read this letter. What did you always say?  
Start talking right away and the rest comes anyway.

 

You had been a member of the voluntary fire brigade since I can remember. I loved your uniform when I was little, that I can indeed remember, and later when I was able to see further I’d admired you for risking your life – ocassionally – to serve the community. I looked up to you.

Arthur Lestrade. My hero.

When you spoke about quitting, I was devestated even when I was already a teenager and we were about to move to London. I didn’t want to see my hero quitting or retiring. And that made me draw an awfully silly conclusion.

Looking back at it from today – older and hopefully wiser – it was so utterly ridiculous and dangerous that I would like to slap my younger self for it.  
Do you remember the series of fires that kept you lot so busy over several weeks?

You are guessing right.  
It was your own son who provided you with “work”.

I had been so careful with the places. Empty storehouses or cars without number plates (it was really a surprise how many of them could be found once I started to hunt for them) only once did I make a mistake that nearly tore a family apart.

Before this one incident it was a game for me. A thrilling little game to keep you busy and myself entertained.

But when I came home to you so pale and shocked and when I heard what you told us about the little babygirl in her room in the attic of the half finished building shell, fast asleep while her parents were working on another part of their new home I carelessly overlooked, and how one from your team managed it to save her in the very last moment, I realised within a second what a fool I had been.

An egoistic, grossly negligent idiot who nearly became a murderer.

The firebug never returned and now you know why and I can only hope you never had a suspicion.  
We moved to London just a few weeks later.

Although I never had a reason to feel unwanted or rejected, your youngest son has been quite a rebel, I’m afraid. I hope you never blamed Mum and yourself.

You two did a great job and I still don’t know what made me giving you this hard time.

I think highly of you and Mum for never making a reproach when I failed to pass my exams after just three semester at Uni. Maybe it was simply not in my blood to become a lawyer. You two didn’t complain about my choice to become a member of the Metropolitan Police Service, although I saw the worries on your faces.

I never told you about my roommate at Hendon or the infamous parties we threw.  
I guess there are things a father doesn’t want to know. All you need to see is that I made my way.  
Against all odds and againt Catherine’s wishes.

I know that you never liked her and I’m aware that I should have listened to you but all those decisions brought me to where I am today and with whom I am today.

I also know that Molly reminds you of Mum. It was obvious to me when I saw your eyes on your first meeting. But don’t worry, she doesn’t know it and I will treat this as a secret between you and me.

You asked me why I never visit Mum’s grave.

The reason is the same why I never returned to Weston – super – Mare to pay Kira a visit. For me those places are headstones and soils of earth with flowers on top. I can’t make a connection to those things and all I can think of is the decaying body six feet under ground and this is not how I want to imagine my own mother or the first love of my life.

You explained to me how much it meant to you to “visit Abigail”, as you put it, regularly and I respect it, but please respect my choice, as well.

I have so many memories of Mum and as long as I can remember her, she will be with me. I don’t need to speak to her headstone.

I somehow feel the need to squeeze all the bits and pieces of andecdotes and funny stories into this letter. Like those countless nights when you kept watch until Sam and I and later Lydia and I returned home from “clubbing” in Soho. We were often so drunk and one time Sam and I got so stoned, we must have looked like Zombies with our red eyes. You never said a word and you always – at least – tried to go to bed before we could notice that you were still awake.

Bad news, Dad, we always knew.

Or do you remember the year when I was about ten or twelve and nagged you about getting a dog? I told you one time every day that I really want to have a dog.

You must have been so unnerved at the end when you eventually gave in.  
And what a fine dog Riddell had been. He was so clever and so mischievous. Kira adored him and I think he loved her more than anyone else in his entire family.

I think I could fill whole books with stories about Riddell. How he stole your breakfast buns over the length of an entire week before you realised it was the dog and not your “old age” (your words back then) that made the buns mystically disappear once you turned your back or how he managed to drag the bike rack from the bakery into the middle of the street before he could get rid of his collar.

I like to stress the fact out that he found his way home all on his own! Don’t talk it down again!

Dad, I know that you don’t need me to say it or even write it down, but I still want you to know how grateful I am for everything you did. By deeds and words.

You have been and still are a fantastic father and my childhood and the years as a rebelling teenager couldn’t have been any better. I caused a lot of trouble for you and Mum but you always stuck to me and I never thought about running away from you.

My home had always been a true home thanks to you; it was always a place that meant safety, acceptance and love. A safe spot and a shelter I could always rely on and that made life a lot easier for me. So, thank you.

Thank you.

With love,

your son Gregory.


	3. Enemies

To Mr Moriarty and Mr Milverton,

it is my pleasure and I take great pride in the following words.  
I hate you.

We all know that it takes a lot to make me come to this conclusion, but you can rest assured that I’m not going to shy away before you any more.

The next time we meet, and this goes to each of you, there won’t be any negotiating. Your games are tiring and we are done with riddles and psychopathic fooling around.

 

I am not Sherlock and contrary to him, I do have a heart and emotions and it took you two to nearly break me.

Bad news. I’m still here and willing to make a selfish sacrifice.  
I’m going to murder you. Everything I have, achieved and owned is put on this one card.

All in.

In a world where you are allowed to stay alive, there won’t be any peace for those people I so dearly care for.

I care.

For Molly and Amelia. Sherlock, Anthea, Sarah and John. I care for Dean and Michael, Mycroft and my father and I care for this city you chose as your playground.

If it takes my fall as police officer and if the faith people put in me needs to be destroyed, so be it.

But you are going to die.

I’m aware that it doesn’t make me a better human being or a fighter for “the right thing”. Actually killing you is against everything I ever believed in and this is how far you really pushed me.  
Maybe I should thank you, as well.

I know now how this feels, the incandescent anger and the white hot hatred upon my tied hands and those rules I dedicated myself to stick to. Because of you, I will break them. I will betray my convictions and there will be no regret once your blood tinges my hands bright red.

You can call me pathetic, but the promise remains and I always stick to the word I once gave.  
You are going to die.

 

Sincerely,  
G. Lestrade


	4. London

Dear London,

you beast, you monster, you awful creature!  
You provider of sleepless nights and shadows. You purgatory, you hell.

You beauty, you habitat, you valkyrie.  
You beloved home with your thousand lights. You friend, you stranger.

When I keep very still and watch you and your traffic, all those people you mean shelter to and all those who call you their home, I wonder how it must be to be so two faced, before I realise that I wear the same two faces just a little different.

 

I can see your beauty and I understand why people love you so much with your facades of glinting glass and history. You are a matron with strong hands and scars deep underneath this pretty face.

I also saw your ugly grimaces and I got an idea what it may mean to have failed against you. You are cruel and heartless. You know no mercy and nevertheless do you attract so many souls.

I lived, worked, loved and roamed in your streets for quite a while and you are still able to surprise me. With little idylls where one wouldn’t have guessed to find them; between bank buildings and council estates.

With human beings doing unimaginable things to other human beings.  
I wonder if I shall curse you or be grateful.

You never spoke to me. I never made sense of your humming and yet I’m self-righteous enough to assume that you would tell me or let me know what you would need me to know.

Maybe I never stood still enough to understand the message.

You can be as cruel and brutal as you want but for me you will be the one city, the one home, I will grow old in, I built a home, founded a family, raised my children and will die here one day..  
A whole life for me and for you just a second.

Maybe I have left my traces on your pavements and roads, maybe my spilled blood and the shed tears left an imprint on you.  
Just a tiny mark that I had once been here, barely noticed by the Grande Dame who saw kings and queens, fires and plagues, wars, destruction and rebirth.

I will always despise and always love you for what you gave me.  
Criminals and friends, darkness and light. Silence and storms.

In the end this may be the only possible way to meet you.

Deceiving.

With respect,  
Gregory Lestrade.


	5. Molly

Dear Molly,

I could fill this page, ten pages and whole notebooks with those three words that mean so much but yet cover so poorly what you mean to me.  
You have been given so many names by me now.  
Beloved, Mrs Lestrade, impossible woman, love, traitor.

Saviour.  
But it will forever be your real name that will make me look up whenever I hear it and that will make my heart skip a beat of instant pride, worry and always, always love.

 

Molly.  
I had been a fool for so long to not notice you earlier. Everything I saw was the nice woman from the morgue who treated me so kindly and made a fantastic coffee.  
But we got our happy end although it is hopefully not really the end for a long time.  
You make me happy, content and feel loved for myself and not anything I own or achieved. You are one of the very few people who know and see me like I really am. I can be weak with you around and I don’t have to feel embarrassed or ashamed. You saw me cry and heard me scream in fear.  
You held me when I was trembling after the worst of those nightmares. You kept watch hour after hour until you got too exhausted to keep your own eyes open any longer.  
You didn’t leave. You stayed at my side even when you must have understood what this meant. Wife to a policeman. There are heavier burdens for sure but I’m still so infinitely grateful that you decided to stay. That you said yes when I asked you to marry me.

Sometimes I remind you not to turn me into a hero or a saint, like I was afraid of this bit of admiration that you express with those words. What really makes me say it is the fear of you getting too attached; too Gregory- and – Molly and less Molly.  
You are strong; stronger than you think you are and I don’t want you to need me to stand against the world. One day you will be on your own.

You are so much younger than I am. It never really meant something but I’m afraid of what it will do to you when I have to go one day let it be by this natural fate and of old age or by something else we don’t have any influence on.  
But don’t let me make this a depressing document of my worries to and about you.  
I think I should have told you more often how gorgeous you are and how much I love those silly moments between us and even more those moments when we don’t need to speak at all to understand each other.  
You stumbled into my life like a lost lambkin and maybe it was the right place and the right time, back then when I saw you  - really you – for the first time and was able to look beyond the labcoat and the messy ponytail.  
I don’t want this letter to sound like a goodbye, but I think I’m about to do something very stupid this evening and I want you to know why I put it all on this card. No matter how it ends for me, there will be consequences and I hope you will stay one more time at my side.

Do you remember what Jacob McCourtney nearly made me do?  
Moriarty and finally Milverton were able to push me this last step forward.  
I always said that death is too merciful for them and that I don’t like or support the “eye for an eye” concept. But I’m desperate.  
You were attacked because I made a mistake. Making deals with Charles Augustus Milverton should have taught me already the first time that there is hardly any escape from him and his twisted version of “justice”.

What will happen if there will be another incident? Another favour he asks me to do for him. And he will, we both know it. After Manchester I’m completely in his hands. I played with fire and I got burnt.  
What will happen if I make another mistake?  
I can’t risk your life.  
Or the life of our daughter.

A child changes everything. How you see the world and suddenly the small things matter again. A butterfly can be a greater miracle than anything else and a sunrise can be so much more enjoyable than a painting that got sold in an auction for a ridiculous amount of money.  
Amelia changed everything and she means the world to me and I would and I will do everything I can to protect her and you. You are my family.  
Milverton became too dangerous and tonight I will make sure that he won’t threaten anyone again.  
Not you, Amelia or anyone else I love.

You got to know me as a man who always plays for the good guys and even wrong decisions are always made in good intention. There are things from my past I never told you because they are long time over and I somehow grew apart from them.  
I have a bad side, as well but I hardly ever give in. Not  since I stood there in the Yard in the new black uniform, surrounded by my friends and colleagues who all had different reasons for joining the force and became a huge family over the time of our shared lessons, trainings and exams we helped each other through  and the oath on my lips: my duty for Queen and country.

Even after all those years as a member of the Met I never regretted it.  
Please forgive me for what I will do and stay with me.  
I’ll be lost without you and Amelia and there wouldn’t be a reason to go on without you in my life.  
I’m afraid. Of Milverton and what I intend to do, if it may change me and that you will leave me for it. But I can’t go back because I made this decision and it wasn’t very easy.

Molly, my dearest, I love you.  
You are my heartbeat and my light in the darkness. You become my eyes when I’m blind and my ears when I’m deaf.  
I can trust your hands to guide me when I fail to move at all.  
Your magic hands, that administered comfort, provided trust and assured me of your love so often that I lost count.

You don’t need to say “I love you” so often. I know it with every inch of my heart and soul.

With all my love.  
Always,

your Gregory


	6. Sherlock

Dear Sherlock,

aside from Molly and Amelia you are always the first person coming to my mind if I find myself dwelling in a rather thoughtful mood; going through those countless what ifs which all involve me being erased from this world.  
I can see you rolling your eyes already and loosing interest in my words.  
Don’t feel forced to continue reading. (If this letter will ever find its way into your hands at all.)

Being your fabulous and flawless self you always consider yourself to be the centre of attention which is mostly indeed the case as I have to admit, but my reasons for thinking of you so highly are a bit different.

 

Since we met the first time all those years back when you had been less smug and more vulnerable and somehow broken and hopeless did I feel the need to protect you or at least give you a shoulder to lean on when needed (metaphorically spoken).

We never became close friends but I hope that you had been able to trust me as much as I always trusted you. You were and will probably forever be like a son to me and I still can’t help it nowadays to remind you to say ‘please’ when you want something particular.

You use to give in and pay me back the next moment by yelling at witnesses or making unnecessary deductions about my colleagues.  
I did not fail to notice it, Sherlock!

You became a part of my world when you worked on more and more cases and finally after weeks and months had I the feeling that my daily struggle with London’s underworld lead to some results and that it was possible again to achieve something. I hadn’t felt it for a long time and you kind of saved me, as well without ever getting to know of it.  
Your work pushed the statistics, of course. But that was never in my mind when I called you and asked you for advice.

Every murder leaves a voiceless corpse behind. The last evidence of a life and a violent death and it is my job to give those lost their voices back a last time before they will fade away forever.

Those cases might be just interesting riddles for you. Challenges to prove your intelligence and to test if you are still witty and clever enough to make the professionals from Scotland Yard appear like amateurs.

For me they are not only my job. A work I get paid for and can return into my warm home with hot water and a filled fridge after my regular workday. I have everything but regular scheduled workdays.

If there should ever be a situation where you happen to find yourself out of your depths (don’t smile in your smug way now, I’m serious) please be assured that you can trust me.  No matter what the newspapers wrote about you, I always believed in you.

I knew you when you had been weakest and I saw you at your lowest and I think that gave me a pretty good idea about you and your nature.

I never told you and you never let me know if you were aware of it, but in order to get you away from your little “guilty pleasure” I had to be on the fiddle to make those stay away from you who benefitted the most of it. You must have given them such a fortune. They were really not easy to get rid of and I shall spare you the details for they don’t matter anymore now.  
It worked in the end and this result is what you should remember.

I will never forget or forgive your jump from St. Bart’s and those weeks and months and eventually those three years where we all had such a hard time to realise, cope and eventually learnt to accept your death.

You didn’t have to listen to John during those casual meetings in Cafés and Pubs, that soon became regular, you didn’t see his eyes, when he spoke about you or witness how his limp returned after you were gone; how small he became and how thin.  
You weren’t the one who comforted Molly and held her in his arms, every night during the first weeks of your being dead, because she cried so much.

You didn’t stand at another grave while they lowered a coffin into the pit.  
I understand that you had  very good reasons to do it, but it hurt, Sherlock, after all it hurt.

As I wrote earlier you are like a son to me and if you are not completely made of ice and logic you may be able to get an idea of the pain you put me through.  
This is not a rebuke. Probably just another lesson I’d like you to understand.

You are unnerving sometimes but reminding myself of you and how you had been during the first weeks when we slowly got to know each other a little better with every case lets me stay patient with you.  
I know how you can be and how you chose not to be anymore. I accepted it but I won’t forget the other Sherlock.  
I believe that you have a heart and that you do care.

The last thing I want to do is asking you for a sacrifice. If anything ever happens to me, please, take care of Molly and my daughter. Look after them and make sure, Molly eats properly.  
I know it is a huge favour to ask for, but I wouldn’t want anyone else to do it.

There is another thing I’d like to tell you. I was your age once and by that time I already made a lot of mistakes. I was a firebug, I lost someone very close to me and did some things I can’t say I’m very proud of; I failed my exams and had to find a new way.

You made mistakes, as well, but never regret it, Sherlock. All your mistakes and decisions made you the person you are now. Unnerving, smug, thoughtful, witty, experienced.

I know that you mutter now that you never regret anything, but we both know that it is not quite true.

  
Forever your confidant in silence and trust.  
GL


End file.
